A year and a half ago, I started putting stickers on my water bottle. Most have to do with things that are dear to me: Dubai, theology, oboe. Amidst those is a metallic golden horse head for Rohan. I wanted something more specifically Éowyn, but all I could find in that realm were stickers that said “Shieldmaiden” and “I am no man.” While these are true of Éowyn, they also leave off where Tolkien ends her character arc, an arc that is powerful to me.
When we first meet Éowyn, Tolkien describes her as “fair and cold, like a morning of pale spring that is not yet come to womanhood.” Her lot, as a young, strong, daughter of kings, has been to wait on a feeble, fading king. No wonder Aragorn perceived her unhappiness when he first saw her. Gandalf later tells Eomer,
“She, being born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonored dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.”
It isn’t surprising that she’s discontent and looking for a way out of what is essentially the cage she fears the most (we’ll come back to the cage). She falls in love with Aragorn, which, of course, only increases her distress, as he’s long promised to Arwen.[1] Distress becomes despair, and as she rides to battle with the Rohirrhim, she’s no longer after glory, but death. Even as she approaches the Witch-King, death and defending Theoden are on her mind, not great deeds.
Nevertheless, she receives honor for her heroism. But the glory of it does not satisfy her: she lives while the world is ending and while the man she loves doesn’t return her love. The Shadow of the Nazgul and the black breath lies heavy on her. She waits, caged, in the Houses of Healing.
This is what she feared the most. Earlier, she had told Aragorn “I fear neither death nor pain.” When he then asked her “What do you fear, my lady?” her response was this: “A cage… to stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” Naturally, she balks at being restrained to the Houses of Healing, even blatantly saying she’s caged, lying idle as she heals.
This is how she then meets Faramir, begging him to release her. Instead, they begin to walk together in the gardens, though she reminds him not to look to her for healing, as she is a shieldmaiden with an ungentle hand. At this point, she has come again to health, though not yet to hope, wishing she had died in battle. Faramir patiently and gently speaks truth to her about who she is, reason for hope, and even her love for Aragorn. Although she improves some, she relapses when word of victory comes, because Aragorn does not send for her. And then, one day, as Faramir continues to do what he has always done for her, the Shadow departs.
“I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun; and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a Shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”
The place that was to her a cage became the place of her own healing, the place she now willingly chooses to stay as “of all dwellings the most blessed.” The ungentle hand that vied with warriors has turned to healing.[2] In The Two Towers, Éowyn understood the alternative to battle as wasting away, caged and useless, “to be burned in the house [when the men have died in battle and honor] for the men will need it no more.” But by the end of The Return of the King, she sees that it can mean to love all things that grow and are not barren, to be a healer, and that such a role is not second-class by any means, nor does it diminish who she is.[3]
As a young teen reading Lord of the Rings, the shieldmaiden part of her story was my favorite part and what I identified with most, though I liked her whole arc. But reading the books again after postpartum depression, her arc is so much clearer to me, and to have made the journey from shieldmaiden to healer and in and out of the Shadow myself has made it all the more powerful—and all the more frustrating when her whole arc isn’t told.
To fear a cage and disuse is not bad. Slaying the Witch King is a worthy, necessary, honorable deed. Aragorn and Faramir’s comments to Éowyn about not going to battle do not mean that women are restricted to the home. But we must also ask how we define a “cage” and “great deeds” and “honor.”[4] Éowyn at one point essentially defines a cage as not being able to do what she wills—but as Aragorn rightly points out “few may do that with honor” especially when there is a question of duty and faithfulness. And he continues to say, “Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised” whether they be unseen deeds of healing, or of slaying inner dragons, or cultivating the hearts of others in our children, churches, and other communities. All of these unseen deeds are what prepares us for whatever greater burden might be thrust upon us (Sam’s loyalty to Frodo and Éowyn’s loyalty to Theoden grew in mundane moments, but led to their great deeds).
To summarize it all in Tolkien’s own words from one of my favorite passages in the whole of Lord of the Rings:
“You do not go, because only your brother called for you, and to look on the Lord Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, in his triumph would now bring you no joy. Or because I do not go, and you desire still to be near me. And maybe for both these reasons, and you yourself cannot choose between them. Éowyn, do you not love me, or will you not?’
‘I wished to be loved by another,’ she answered, ‘But I desire no man’s pity.’
‘That I know,’ he said. ‘You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn. Because he was high and puissant, and you wished to have renown and glory and to be lifted far above the mean things that crawl on the earth. And as a great captain may to a young soldier he seemed to you admirable. For so he is, a lord among men, the greatest that now is. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle. Look at me, Éowyn!’
And Éowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: ‘Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn! But I do not offer you my pity, For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn do you not love me?’
Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.
‘I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,’ she said; ‘and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.’ And again she looked at Faramir. ‘No longer do I desire to be a queen,’ she said.
Then Faramir laughed merrily. ‘That is well,’ he said; ‘for I am not a king. Yet I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will. And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.”
[1] As much as I love Tolkien and he can do very little wrong in my eyes, I’m annoyed by the love triangle.
[2] Though as the hands of the King are the hands of the healer, in Tolkien’s mind, to be a healer and a warrior are not opposed to one another.
[3] I’m pretty sure Tolkien is saying something about manhood and womanhood with Éowyn’s complete character arc and the conversations with and about her. But I still have a lot to think out and research in that realm before I can say for sure if/what commentary on gender Tolkien is giving here or elsewhere. I also know he did not intentionally make many points (see page 211 of his letters), so anything that can be said likely needs to be drawn from other comments and understanding his broader worldview, of which he’s said very little specifically on this topic (letter 43 in his letters is as much as I’ve yet seen). He does say this explicitly about her, but I do believe he elsewhere does refer to her as Amazonian. “She was not herself ambitious in the true political sense. Though not a ‘dry nurse’ in temper, she was also not really a soldier or ‘amazon’, but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis.” (Letters, page 323, written in 1963).
[4] In The Tolkien Reader, Tolkien has some comments that are well worth reading in this vein in conjunction with his poem, The Homecoming of Beorthnoth.
Kyleigh Dunn 